How Do You Manage Your Own Privacy?

Internet of Humans
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The EU creates some protections such the GDPR, as do other laws but ultimately responsibility rests with us as to how we manage the amount of privacy we want. If we are conscious about it, of course.

What do you do?

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I have been something of a public figure on the Internet for a long time so I don’t do a lot to protect myself from the public. But here are some things that I do…

I use Facebook on my laptop but do not have it on my phone. And in general I keep data gathering services off of my phone.
I use Duck Duck Go for search.
I have a cover for my laptop camera.
I password protect my screens when traveling.
I have a decent password scheme, though it would be more convenient if i used a password service.
I do financial transactions and medical stuff on a browser that I don’t use for anything else.
I have a Google account for my Edgeryders work but do not use it for anything else, and only on Chrome. I confine Google activities almost all the Chrome and not on other browsers. (I don’t know if this really matters…)

There are more and I will add them as I think of them…

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@johncoate — I kind of subscribe to the data as pollution meme; I simply minimize the about of data I store at my edge, clean regularly, and avoid signing up to additional services like the plague.

While it would be inconvenient; I can wipe out my tablets, cellphone and computer and in a day or so can be back at a similar state than before; since I have sorted the “bring joy” data from the cruft.

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I back up my stuff to discrete hard drives and avoid the cloud as much as possible. I could wipe my data and be back in business pretty quickly.

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I self-censor, treating social networks and the like as a public arena. This turns out not to be a huge deal for me, because I always aspire to transparency, to not to have to hide. This summer I came out as polyamorous, and deliberately used a blog post and a Facebook post to do so, to make sure I control the narrative.

I am aware this means I have to talk about my private life as if I were some kind of PR firm (“control the narrative”, WTF). But it seems the path of least resistance, certainly cheaper than trying to keep things under wraps.

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